National, regional, and international cooperation for sustainable environmental and resource management: The place and roles of NGOs

(introductory text...)

Introduction

Information sharing

Partnerships with other institutions

Dialogues with governmental and industry organs

Linking with policy institutions

Working with monitoring institutions for effective implementation and accountability

Conclusion

References

Partnerships with other institutions

NGOs are also developing, or are being called upon to enter into,
partnerships with many other actors to empower both themselves and also other
weaker groups from among themselves. Other groups may be considered weaker
because, in addition to information gaps, they may need technical support, or
mobilization skills, or supporters and advocators as they struggle for control
over the resources they use and manage as part of their daily work, or machinery
to link them to national power systems in order to strengthen their work, or the
strength of numbers as an empowering strategy for coping with forces that appear
too bewildering to be tackled singly.

The ways in which they are doing this include the following.

Networking among the like-minded

Umbrella or membership organizations engaged in networking can identify
strengths and weaknesses within their community of NGOs. Then, they either
provide the information so that members can contact each other directly, or link
members to each other through various schemes. NGOs in Zaire and Tanzania, for
example, have strengthened their forestry-related activities and management by
learning on the ground and enhancing their skills through networking with NGOs
in Kenya: the GreenBelt Movement and Kenya Energy and Environment NGOs (KENGO).
NGOs in Kenya and Zimbabwe enriched their organic farming skills by spending
time at each other's locations and learning as they worked. In the process they
were also experimenting and improving the methods. Similarly, NGOs from Kenya
and Uganda have enhanced each other's skills through exchange visits. Many
others, including some from other third world regions, have strengthened their
networking and management skills through visits to the Environment Liaison
Centre International, a membership organization based in Nairobi, Kenya. It is
clear that NGOs will enhance their resource-management skills through exchange
visits among themselves within Africa and on a South-South basis.

Partnerships with groups at the village/community level

In some cases, NGOs are linking up with local-level groups as a strategy for
forging lasting and more result-oriented relationships. But they are also being
called upon by the groups themselves to enter into partnerships with them in
order to enhance their own efforts. Examples are women's groups, and I don't
mean middle-class women, but the groups that depend directly on the resource
base for their livelihoods and those of their households. Increasing degradation
of the resource base is inflicting a harsher "onslaught" on women
resource-users. These are the women who, to a greater extent, have retained what
indigenous knowledge of resource management is extant. They are the managers of
the resources they use on a daily basis. Therefore they hold a key to the
sustainability of the resources. Yet their knowledge and roles remain
unrecognized, though talked about. Women continue to represent the majority who
are struggling for control over and easier access to the resources.

The idea of partnerships is not new to African women. Recognizing the need
for partners, women have developed mutual-aid societies. The Kenyan word
"harambee" is the most appropriate one I have come across to describe
this. Whether they are known as clubs, groups, or cooperatives, the spirit
behind them is the same.

As the environmental issues move from the local to the national and on to the
wider world, as ownership of the resources shifts from women to men and from
local to national power structures, and as support systems move out of the
locality to the national capitals, women's partners must in turn reflect this
wider horizon and especially be able to link them to the distant power brokers.
NGOs, being of and for the people, fulfil this role. NGOs are already providing
invaluable partners, strengthening women's groups in many ways: enhancing their
capacities by improving the women's knowledge base, making it more efficient and
reflective of the changing environment; empowering women through the acquisition
of managerial and other technical skills; carrying out advocacy work on behalf
of women to local and national power holders and brokers and to policy makers.
Those NGOs that are able to carry out research can facilitate people-centred
research, in order to strengthen local-level resource management, by bringing
women into the research process. Thus women would be enabled to play lead roles
in the use of research results for sustainable development.

Coalitions with other groupings

NGOs are working with an array of other institutions for sustainable
management of the resources. Peasant societies and unions, farmers' unions,
which in some cases mean large-scale farmers (to be distinguished from peasant
unions), legal aid associations, fishermen's cartels, and in a few cases trade
unions are some such groupings. NGOs work with them in their struggles against
powerful forces whose practices are dangerous to the environment. In other third
world regions these types of coalition have grown into movements. This has
rarely been the case in Africa. Nevertheless, these unions are emerging and need
to be encouraged and supported as a means of sustaining efforts at resource
management. They will play major roles in the years
ahead.